News Kurtzman: Starfleet Academy Series On The Way

I know. I was kind of looking after that episode. I actually look as Best of Both Worlds and Family as a kind of trilogy. With Family sort of being the epilogue to the story.

 

Family does a pretty good job and if that were the last word on it I would accept it, if a bit unbelievable as Counselor Troi notes with current trauma research. But, acceptable at a story level. But, First Contact showed that there was still more to it so I welcome the ongoing exploration, that trauma, while recoverable still has a lasting impact.

 

Just occurred to me that Picard is now more machine than he was as Locutus. That idea is something they should explore Picards feelings on next season.

 

This attitude of "control" and "stiff upper lip" is a key reason why we currently have suicide rates at the levels noted in this article https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/01/male-suicide-rate-england-wales-covid-19

That isn't to accuse you of anything, but to say that they should have perfect temperament at all times is, to me, unhealthy.

I may be wrong, but I'm struggling to think of many, or any, instances in Disco where these expressions of emotion that people hate so much occurred at inappropriate times. I can think of them in people's quarters or when alone somewhere but it isn't as if halfway through that battle with Control everyone sat down and just had a little cry

 

I don't think repression and equanimity are the same thing. There are people who are happy and have found inner peace who have suffered all sorts of tragedies, and aren't repressed nor doing themselves psychological damage

Previously portrayed characters never lacked emotions; they just appeared to be infinitely better equipped to process and deal with them. It's heartening to think that in 200-300 years we might have reached a level as a society where tragedy needn't floor us so hard.

 

But it is unrealistic to expect all characters to have reached a zen like state.

The key for me is the latter half of my post where I point out that it didn't appear that they were suffering emotional trauma on the bridge mid mission but were expressing it when in the quarters or off duty.

I would also contend that 90s Trek avoided dealing with emotions to such an extent that it is not possible to determine whether they were dealt with thoroughly or in a better manner - how can they be assessed if we don't see them portrayed

 

Well the TNG people were suppose to be more evolved than us. Well not so much evolved in the way Tom Paris evolved into a Lizard but they are still us but simply more well adjusted and better at dealing with emotional issues usually. I mean it's something lots of the writers chipped away at, especially on Ds9 , Berman's entire run because I think that was what he felt was part of the Roddenberry vision. I mean is it any wonder he had so many bad and restrictive ideas. The guy basically spent 15 years or so making ideas on guesses of what a dead guy would have wanted done. A vision he openly admits he didn't believe in at all.

 

I take your point about where it happens - but my contention isn't mainly that it makes them unprofessional (though some of their behaviour does call that into question), more that a) it jarringly flies in the face of how we understand humans of the future to operate, based on over a dozen seasons of episodes, b) is overused so often as to desensitise - one or two traumas can be poignant, shocking, evoke empathy, but every episode begins to erode that.

I agree that *more* time could have been devoted to showing the consequences of trauma for characters, but I don't think it was entirely absent. Aside from Picard's trauma in Family or Emissary or First Contact; the entire DS9 pilot is Sisko dealing with the death of his wife and coming to terms with it; Seven's departure from the collective casts a long shadow over her next few years on Voyager, with a clear evolution of her coming to terms with it despite the show's episodic nature. Flashpoints for characters who didn't fully deal with things include Torres' dangerous behaviour in Extreme Risk and Janeway's depression in Night (both issues carried around for some time), or Garak's actions in The Wire.

I agree it often felt that issues were a bit too "neat" and fitted into an episodes and then were packaged away again. And a little more continuity would help there. But I don't need to see characters abused and traumatised every single episode, breaking down in every episode, and having no other way of healing and managing because I believe in 300 years, psychology would have moved on and we'd be fed better at mental health, just as we're far better at it today than a century ago.

 

The crew of the Discovery never had that chance. So, again, the portrayed emotions are realistic and to @Ianburns252 point the crew is not showing emotions in inappropriate ways. They still do their jobs. We just see the emotional aftermath too.

 

I guess it's hard when you have to squash your year into 13 episodes and have half the time to squeeze your angst in

 

Think a key point here is that they don't appear to be over the course of a year.

So what we are seeing is the characters dealing with a barrage of emotions and not having a lot of time with which to deal with it.

In the old series there would be a greater amount of time between episodes and, therefore, more time to process the events of previous ones.

 

Devoting one or two episodes to it is still mostly ignoring it. Trauma like that is something that's constantly present in one's life, not something you only deal with once in a while.

If they were more well-adjusted and better at dealing with their emotional issues than we are today, then they would by definition be expressing their emotions more often and more freely than we do today.

 

True, but compare that one episode to the zero episodes the had dealing with him recuperating from essentially living another life and watching his family and world die in The Inner Light, or from being captured and tortured by the Cardassians for what was it, a week or so in Chain of Command. The fact they did that one episode is pretty damn impressive.

 

By the standards of the time they were doing that. That was why TNG had Troi a counselor on the ship. It's just most of them didn't have the emotional baggage that we modern humans have thus they never had much to talk about in that way. The idea of a counselor is a good idea but especially when you put characters in the sessions that have major issues. Of course used brilliantly on The Sopranos. One of the underated great elements of that show.

 

It was extremely impressive and things like Family or The Wounded are highlights because it recognizes that trauma. I would hope that such things could be more freely expressed rather than less now.